Hello. I'm just getting started with this program. My wife and I have fewer than 20 stable investment instruments, so our financial picture is not extremely complex. Up to this time, I have been relying on monthly and quarterly statements from institutions to make a ball park assessment of our position, and so far, that has been adequate. However, my wife will retire in a bit over a year, and I am less than 2 years away from the age 70-1/2 deadline (already retired,) so I have purchased IAM to allow me to look at a (relatively) current picture of all of our investments simultaneously, instead of doing ad hoc reconstruction from various paper documents. I plan to enter everything manually. My first question is in regard to the merits of entering current values, and updating as I get future statements, versus entering true opening balances, and all of the transactional information on historical periodic statements for each instrument. My thought is that entering everything from day one might show some trends, but I'm uncertain just how valuable that might be. Perhaps a compromise such as entering "as of" starting balance and subsequent transactions for a limited time period might be best. Any advice? Pointers to existing FAQ or papers covering this question are welcome in lieu of repitition. Thanks in advance.

Many users simply start with IAM3 by downloading their current holdings from their broker accounts, editing these to reflect accurate tax basis, and then going forward, downloading ongoing future activity. For these users of IAM3, entering historical data and past performance is not of concern. Rather, these users prefer to just set up their portfolio(s) to reflect current holdings, and then tracking activity and performance going forward from there. By the way, you can also initially create your portfolios by manually entering just your current tax lots instead of downloading if your broker is not listed in our supported broker list.

Alternatively, if you do want to measure performance based on all past historical activity, have a record of your past transactions, then you can create your portfolio(s) from inception. While this will require you to work thru past yearly broker statements from the start of the account, it does offer a more comprehensive accounting of your holdings from inception.